


Horizon: Justice Dawn

by Isis_the_Sphinx, Mangaluva



Category: DCU, Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Characters will be added as they appear - Freeform, Diana/Aloy won't be a thing for a while but it WILL be a thing I swear to you, F/F, Some of Themyscira and the Amazons based on the 2017 movie, Some violence but nothing really graphic yet, some a mishmash of whatever we like most from the comics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-01-20 03:48:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12424401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis_the_Sphinx/pseuds/Isis_the_Sphinx, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mangaluva/pseuds/Mangaluva
Summary: A metal bird comes crashing onto Themyscira, bearing a stranger with unpleasant news for the isolated Amazons. But this time, it's not Steve Trevor.





	1. The Stranger

The water seemed to go on forever.

 

It shouldn’t be able to. There had to be a far shore, surely. But the sun was setting behind her now and she  _ still _ couldn’t see land.

 

Her Focus told her that it should not be anywhere near time for the sun to set yet, but her eyes were telling her it was.  _ It will still be dark before I arrive back at land if I turn around, _ she thought.  _ Surely I will find land soon. But if the sun goes down, will I be able to see it in the dark? I hope there are people for my Focus to find _ ...

 

She could do nothing but urge the Stormbird to go faster. Its wings roared as it pushed itself to go even faster. She’d never flown one for this many hours at a time before. The ocean hadn’t looked this big on the globe. What if the other lands the Old Ones had drawn were all underwater now, and the water really  _ did _ keep going until she found home again? Would the Stormbird’s power last? 

 

The last sliver of sun was just sinking below the horizon, casting orange light over the sea, when she finally saw it, a flare of gold ahead of her that did not move like waves.  _ Land! _

 

She couldn’t see any signs of humans on her Focus, but at least she wouldn’t have to fly over water in the dark. She didn’t trust the Stormbird enough to sleep on its back--she  _ needed _ to make camp. She was trying to decide if she should try to eat on the Stormbird’s back or wait until she’d reached land when she heard a screech that sent chills down her spine.

 

Stormbirds. More of them.  _ Multiple  _ Stormbirds.

 

And they were flying towards her.

 

{}

 

It was a beautiful day in Themyscira. It always was.

 

Diana wandered along the library shelves, idly scanning the books as if there was a single one she hadn’t read ten, twenty, thirty times, as if she hadn’t helped recopy every single book when they started to wear out, as books do over centuries. 

 

Most of the Amazons did the same thing, day in and day out, for thousands of years. They rotated; a century farming here, a century of construction and pottery there, a century of palace or specialist work next, a century of full-time fighting. They all trained, of course, every one of them. But Diana was the princess, the one who trained the hardest, studied the hardest, was to stand with her mother and aunt at the head of the greatest army on earth when…

 

When…

 

When?

 

The gods would call on them when they were needed, everybody knew that. Diana had been the only child born on the island after they’d arrived four thousand years ago, and in four thousand years the gods had not called them for anything. They trained and trained for a day that never, ever came. 

 

She walked out of the library, following a familiar path along the cliffs. Every path on the island was familiar. Every  _ inch _ of the island was familiar. Though the sun had set, she had no fear of falling from the cliffs in the dark. Antiope spent all of her time planning more difficult fight courses and trying to invent new, more complex fighting moves; perhaps Diana could go see if she’d come up with anything new today, talk to the warriors and see how their training had gone. Be the princess, show them her pride in them, even though she sometimes wondered if it was all for nothing. 

 

Diana paused as an unfamiliar sound filtered through the constant soft roll of the waves and rustle of leaves. It was a horrific tearing  _ shriek _ , but it was  _ new _ , and that sent an electrifying thrill down her spine.

 

Looking up, she saw something wreathed in flames falling into the sea. More things, covered in glowing lights, some also aflame, were flying after it, like monstrous birds. She’d never seen them before. 

 

She was already running before the first one hit the water, throwing off her cloak and diving into the sea.

 

Under the evening water it was nearly pitch-black, but as she swam towards whatever was burning on the surface, Diana felt something brush past her arm. She closed her eyes, diving under the water and feeling for--there.

 

Bubbles. Bubbles rose past her hand. Below her, something was releasing air. Someone was drowning.

 

She kicked out hard, propelling herself as fast as she could through the water, determined to find the bubbles’ source before the air ran out. The trail had grown weak when her fingers brushed hair. Praying a silent apology, Diana grabbed the hair, anchoring herself to the other person in the water. She felt her way down to grip the stranger’s arms, feeling heavy metal coating their body. Some parts of it were dangling by straps; the stranger had been attempting to divest herself of the heavy metal she was wearing, but now she was floating limp and unmoving, still weighed down by metal and leather that was much thicker and heavier than the light leatherwork that Diana wore.

 

When  _ truly  _ bored, Diana had sometimes challenged herself to see how long she could hold her breath underwater. Her lungs were strong, and she could manage a whole half hour. She could afford to spare some air for the first new face in four thousand years. She put her hands on the stranger’s cheeks, pressing her mouth to the other woman’s, sucking out as much seawater as she could and swallowing it into her stomach before breathing out air. She pressed a hand to the stranger’s throat, relieved to feel a weak pulse. She used that hand to hold the stranger’s head in place, helping her breathe while pulling off the rest of her heavy armour one-handed and propelling them towards the surface.

 

When they reached air she heard the stranger cough and gasp desperately. It was dangerous to stay above the surface with the giant, screaming birds still nearby, but she wasn’t sure that the stranger could take a deep enough breath to swim underwater. Diana struck out for shore, keeping a firm hold on her burden. 

 

“FIRE!”

 

Diana looked up with a grin as flaming arrows streaked across the sky above her. She hadn’t thought to alert anybody before jumping off of the cliff, but of course as soon as  _ anything _ happened on Themyscira, Queen Hippolyta knew of it. Archers were ranged along the cliffs, firing at the sparkling birds. They seemed very resilient to being set on fire. One of them screamed and swooped at the cliff.

 

“SCATTER!” Antiope ordered. There were yells as the bird dived, but no screams of pain, so Diana hoped that nobody had been grabbed. There was another mighty roar, but this didn’t come from the giant birds. Diana knew this roar well. It was the battle cry of Artemis, the physically strongest of all the Amazons. 

 

“You are safe now,” Diana reassured the coughing stranger as she pulled her onto the beach. In the moonlight, Diana could pick out flame-red hair and pale skin. “You’re safe,” she repeated, rubbing the woman’s back as she threw up sea water.

 

“Thank you,” the stranger gasped. “The… Stormbirds…!” She groped at her back as if reaching for a weapon, but there was nothing there, probably sunk with her armour. 

 

“You’re safe,” Diana said again, speaking English, like the stranger. As she did so, one of the monstrous birds crashed into the beach nearby, one of its wings falling separately a little further away. Artemis came tumbling off of its back, twitching and groaning. Diana got up, running towards her. The bird was still thrashing and screeching, and Artemis did not look to be getting up and getting away. 

 

“Destroy the power cores!” the stranger yelled, her voice hoarse and rough from drowning. “Where it glows!”

 

“Understood!” Diana shouted, stooping to scoop up Artemis’ huge two-handed battleaxe (though Artemis often wielded it one-handed, just because she could) as she ran. She leapt into the air, swinging the axe over her head, and brought it down on the glowing points of the bird’s remaining wing. As soon as she did, the bird shrieked, but she also felt a jolt, like being punched in every part of her body at once. She stumbled back, suddenly unable to move, her skin tingling like her whole body had fallen asleep. 

 

“DIANA!”

 

Diana couldn’t move, but in the light of the fire and the great bird’s body, which seemed to be crackling with lightning, she could see the majestic figure of Queen Hippolyta as she leapt from the cliff, bringing her sword down onto the bird’s head, finally stilling it. 

 

Now the flame-haired stranger was kneeling over Diana. “Lie still,” she said. “Give it a moment. Stormbirds shock you when you touch them unless you’re wearing Oseram Sparkworker armour…” She pulled a metal greave from her left leg and dumped it on the sand. “And I guess mine’s at the bottom of your bay now.” She looked up at Hippolyta. “Don’t touch them, shoot for the eyes,” she said. “You can take them down with fire arrows, but it takes a  _ long _ time.”

 

“Are you an archer?” Hippolyta asked, unslinging a bow and quiver from her back and passing them over. “Show me.”

 

The stranger pulled an arrow out, examining the point. “I’ve been shooting since I was six,” she said, drawing and firing upwards, striking one of the birds from below as it flew at the cliff. It screamed, crashing into the cliffside and tumbling down onto the beach. 

 

“So I see,” Hippolyta said approvingly. “ANTIOPE! THE EYES!” she bellowed.

 

“THE EYES! FIRE!” Antiope ordered. Diana pushed herself up onto her elbows as feeling started to return to her limbs. 

 

Artemis was shakily pushing herself to her feet, though she tripped and stumbled back to her knees. “I feel as if I was struck by the lightning of Zeus himself,” the warrior groaned.

 

“The lightning of the thunderbirds is powerful,” the stranger said. “I’m amazed you stood it for so long without burning.”

 

“Amazons are the greatest warriors on earth, and made of stronger earth than humans,” Hippolyta said, leaning down to help Diana to her feet. “Help Artemis, stranger, if you feel strong enough. We must leave the beach. It is dangerous here.”

 

“My name is Aloy,” the stranger said, pulling one of Artemis’ arms over her shoulders and following Hippolyta and Diana down the beach. “What are Amazons, if not humans?”

 

{}

 

“The healers are seeing to nine injured,” Antiope reported, walking into the throne room. “We are lucky that none were killed. What  _ were _ those things?”

 

Hippolyta looked to Aloy. The young woman had been brought to the throne room, given a seat and food while Hippolyta arranged patrols to keep watch for anymore of the strange metal birds--Stormbirds, Aloy had called them. “Things have changed since we left the world,” Hippolyta said. “Aloy. What  _ are _ these Stormbirds? Where do they come from?”

 

“They’re robots,” Aloy said. “The world’s full of them. You really don’t know?”

 

“What are robots?” Antiope asked.

 

“Uh...Machines, with a mind of their own, created for a task.” The visitor blinked in slight confusion.

 

“Machines… like a water wheel?” Diana asked. “But these were like living creatures! How could such things have a mind of their own?”

 

“Of a sort. They have a very limited...set of instructions. But really, machines like that are  _ everywhere. _ I flew in on one! There aren’t any here?” Aloy exclaimed. “They’ve been in the world for about nine-hundred  _ years _ .”

 

“We retreated into secrecy here on Themyscira four thousand years ago,” Hippolyta explained. “We Amazons have a sacred duty to protect mankind when they are most in need. We have been waiting, and training, for the day when the gods will call on us to fight.”

 

Aloy stared at Hippolyta, face blank, as if she was going over the words again in her mind. “You, uh, missed your cue. Everyone died once. War machines killed them all.”

 

There was a ringing silence in the throne room. The Amazons gathered around the bottom of the throne steps, who had been talking quietly amongst themselves, fell quiet. Hippolyta stood up, her face pale. Aloy looked around nervously as every eye in the room fell on her.

 

“What are you talking about, child?” Senator Acantha demanded. “ _ You _ came from the outside.”

 

“Yes, because some bright soul saw the world couldn’t be saved, and made machines that would wait until the war machines died from starvation, and then slowly built up life again, like seeds for next planting. It’s a very long story.” Aloy said, a little sharply.

 

“But this cannot be,” Hippolyta said quietly. “If mankind was on the brink of extinction, of being wiped out by these war machines, why did the gods not call on us?”

 

“Maybe they were already dead,” Antiope said bitterly.

 

“Antiope!” Hippolyta said sharply. “Such blasphemy--”

 

“Is warranted, if this woman is telling the truth!” Antiope argued. “Either the gods could not call on us, or they  _ would _ not, and if they chose to let innocents be destroyed rather than allowing us to carry out our duty to protect them, how can we show them respect?”

 

“General, your tongue is running too hot,” Penelope said sharply. “You cannot speak of the gods that way. They must have had a reason. Perhaps mankind succumbed to the corruption that we have kept ourselves from, and were not worth saving. Perhaps they felt that this ‘bright soul’s’ plan to rebuild humanity anew was for the best. Or perhaps this girl is lying because she does not wish us to know the truth of who she is and where she comes from,” the priestess added, giving Aloy a very regal stink-eye. “Perhaps more of her war machines are coming for us as we speak.”

 

“I am Aloy, of the Nora!” she declared, eyes hot with anger and a little bit of disgust for the words. “I am speaking the truth because I searched for it, fought for it,  _ bled _ for it, and saved the world because the truth was about to come out of the stinking hole it’d been living in and kill us all over again!” she snarled, hand clenching as if used to holding a weapon. Some voice of cooler reason must have come into her head because she took a breath and forcibly relaxed. “I can tell the story, if you want to know. But it is long.”

 

“Tell me you cannot listen to this one speak with such passion and know that she is a  _ warrior _ , one who has fought mighty battles,” Antiope said, glaring at Penelope.

 

“Enough,” Hippolyta said. “Aloy, if you will tell us your story, we will be happy to hear it. Send for Clio to keep record of her story,” she ordered, looking to one of her attendants. “And… have the lasso of Hestia brought. While holding it, you can speak only the truth,” she explained, turning back to Aloy. “I think it will calm certain minds to know that you tell your story with Hestia’s blessing.”

 

Aloy nodded, anger faded. “Who is Hestia?” she asked, curious.

 

“This girl does not even know the gods!” Penelope said in disgust.

 

“Priestess, with respect, that will be  _ enough _ ,” Diana said, standing up. “Aloy is our  _ guest _ . We may not have had one for four thousand years, but you cannot have forgotten how to treat a guest with respect. Hestia is a goddess of the home and of order,” she explained, turning back to Aloy. “The gods all gave gifts to the Amazons, and Hestia gave us the Golden Perfect, a rope that reveals the truth of things. I must warn you that it may burn you if you attempt to lie, and that resisting its power is both painful and pointless. But I am sure you need not worry about that,” she said reassuringly. 

 

“I wouldn’t,” Aloy shrugged. “No reason to.”

 

It did not take long for Clio to enter into the hall, prepared with a small writing desk and parchment, and Lieutenant Egeria came after her, lasso held in two hands. With a nod from Hippolyta, one end was wrapped firmly around Aloy’s two hands. 

 

“Okay, that feels...odd. And it’s glowing.” Aloy stared at the lasso.

 

“It does that,” Diana said. “Now. Please tell us of these war machines and how they came to wipe out mankind.”

 

“A man called Ted Faro called for their creation,” she said, and looked surprised at the words that’d come out of her mouth, before shrugging and continuing. “They could strategize, and could make more of themselves and repair, as well, if needed, and used living material--all living material--as fuel. And then they broke free from control and no one could stop them. They... _ ate _ everything.”

 

“But you are alive now,” Diana prompted when no more seemed forthcoming. “How?”

 

“Uh…” Aloy hissed as the lasso took the hesitation as a lie and grumbled. “A woman called Elisabet Sobek. She had a plan. If no one could stop the machines, wait until they ate everything, and then use that time to figure out how to turn them off, and then reseed the world. She took seeds and...enough from animals to be able to rebirth them again later, when it was safe. The same with people. They dug secret bunkers, hidden from the machines, and created a...mind. Called Gaia. That would control everything once Elisabet and her team died. Once the machines stopped, Gaia got to work. She had a helper called Minerva, that figured out the code to turn the machines off. And then Hephaestus, to create machines that  _ Gaia _ could control, to clean the air and oceans and make the land sweet again. And Eluthia--cradle facilities, where the new generation of humans were born, hundreds of years later. All the humans out there now have an ancestor that came from a cradle facility. It’s how I’m here.”

 

“Hephaestus?” Menalippe asked. “The god of the forge created machines for this mind that the humans created?”

 

“Then the gods decided that the humans before were not worth our saving,” Penelope said. “They worked with this Gaia to create a new world, new humans!”

 

“No!” Aloy exclaimed. “Hephaestus was a...smaller mind. They called it a sub-AI. Artificial intelligence. Gaia’s smith.”

 

“Gaia, Hephaestus, Minerva… they sound like gods created by humans,” Diana mused. “Menalippe… could it be true that the gods could have already died, forcing humanity to make new ones?”

 

“Or that the gods let mankind die in retribution for such blasphemy,” Penelope argued.

 

“From Aloy’s story, if any blasphemy was committed, it was after mankind was already abandoned,” Menalippe said quietly. “We were not called when mankind was on the brink of destruction. We should have been. It was our duty to protect mankind… and we failed to do so.”

 

“We should not simply have waited here,” Antiope said. “We should have kept our own watch on the world. We know nothing now of these machines, or how to fight them if more should come! If they seek to wipe out mankind again, we will be  _ powerless _ to save mankind from total annihilation!”

 

“Then let Aloy teach us,” Hippolyta said, gesturing to the young woman. “She has travelled the world outside of Themyscira. She knows a great deal about these monsters, and she is a warrior. Let her teach us how to fight them.”

 

“And she must teach us about the world outside!” Diana said, her eyes glittering with excitement. “After all, if we are to leave Themyscira to fight these machines--”

 

“I said nothing of leaving Themyscira, Diana,” Hippolyta said sternly.

 

“Forgive me, Hippolyta, but while I agree that Aloy ought to teach us, you must see that learning from her is useless if all we do is wait here for the machines to come to us,” Antiope argued. “We must take the fight to them--not only to defend our own shores, but to atone for our failure to protect mankind! We did not do our duty nine hundred years ago! We must do it  _ now _ !”

 

“If it helps,” Aloy jumped in sheepishly, “I can’t teach you to fight against machines without the machines. There are many of them, and they vary in weakspots and strengths. And some of them are very,  _ very _ big.”

 

Antiope turned back to Hippolyta, taking a knee. “My Queen, I formally ask you to allow me to take a force of our soldiers to travel with this Aloy, to learn how to fight these machines,” she said. “Not the bulk of the army. I will not leave Themyscira undefended. But let me take those who most wish to learn this new enemy.”

 

Hippolyta looked from Antiope to Aloy, sighing deeply. “Twelve, General Antiope,” she said. “Take twelve warriors of Themyscira. Be our eyes, our ears, our swords. Tell us of this new world and the unknown monsters hiding in it.”

 

“My Queen, let me go with them,” Diana added, dropping to a knee next to Antiope.

 

“Absolutely not,” Hippolyta said immediately. “Diana, you are not just a warrior, you are the Princess of Themyscira--”

 

“That is  _ exactly _ why I should go, Mother,” Diana pleaded. “Who better to be our envoy to the people of the new world? I have studied all my life the diplomacy of peoples and nations who are long dead. Let me, too, fulfil my duty by learning of these new humans and building bridges between us.”

 

“Hippolyta, I will protect her with my life,” Antiope added. 

 

“I do not doubt your skills, Antiope,” Hippolyta sighed, “but we know  _ nothing _ of this word and its dangers. To send not only my sister, but my beloved, only daughter into the world blind…”

 

“With a dozen Amazons and the single greatest warrior who has ever lived,” Diana insisted. “And we will not be blind. We will have Aloy.”

 

“...What if  _ I _ swore to protect her?” Aloy raised her still lasso-bound hands. “She did save my life. I owe her a debt, and I always pay back my debts.”

 

“A noble sentiment, child, but though you are a fine archer, every woman on this island has thousands of years of experience over you,” Hippolyta sighed.

 

“Yeah, but I’ve got twenty years’ experience fighting machines over every woman on this island,” Aloy shot back.

 

Antiope laughed. “She has the heart of a true warrior!” she said. “It will be an honour to learn from her.”

 

“Besides, Mother, as you say, I have thousands of years’ experience in combat,” Diana added. “I can handle myself in the world outside!”

 

“Stormbirds don’t usually flock like that, over land they’re solitary machines. Your warriors handled that quite well, and they’re one of the three biggest machines I’ve ever encountered.” Aloy said. “The other two in similar size can be outrun.”

 

Hippolyta closed her eyes, putting her head in her hand. “I know you, my child,” she said softly. “You have your heart set on this. You will go even if I do not allow it. And you, Antiope… you will help her, even if I forbid it.”

 

“Hippolyta, you are the greatest Queen of the Amazons, and we could have chosen none better to lead us,” Antiope said, “but you are also my sister. If I disagree with you, I must speak my mind. And Diana is not only one of the very greatest of our warriors--she is an ideal envoy to the people of the world.”

 

“ _ Please,  _ Mother,” Diana begged. “I  _ must _ go, but I would far rather do so with your blessing.”

 

“Then… you shall have it,” Hippolyta said, drawing herself up regally with a grim expression. “Choose your twelve, Antiope. Aloy…” she gestured to one of her attendants. “Cydippe will show you to your room, or help you with anything that you require while you are on Themyscira. Diana, come with me. There is much we must discuss.”

 

“Thank you, Mother!” Diana said excitedly, standing up and formally bowing before bouncing on her heels and turning to hug Aloy. “I am most excited to see your world, Aloy!”

 

Aloy  _ squeaked _ and smiled. “It’ll be fun for everyone. Um. Can someone untie my hands?”

 

Diana laughed, unwrapping the lasso. “Thank you, lieutenant,” she said, handing the lasso back to Egeria. “I shall see you tomorrow, Aloy!”

 

“Tomorrow, Princess,” she nodded and bowed briefly to Hippolyta, following Cydippe out of the main hall. As they left, those who remained could hear, “I could use a bath. And, um, new armor. Is it possible to retrieve my spear from the bay? It was special to me…”

 

{}

 

The silence as Diana followed her mother through the halls of the palace was uncomfortable. Diana remembered such uncomfortable silences from when she was a child and had argued, day in and day out, to be allowed to begin warrior’s training. She had been so excited to see the other Amazons fight, and so ignorant of how long they would be on Themyscira with no wars to fight, how much time she had ahead of her. Her mother must have had an inkling of how long they might wait for a call to arms--perhaps she had hoped it would never come. She had wanted for Diana to remain a child as long as she could.

 

Now…

 

“Mother… I understand why you do not want me to go,” Diana began. 

 

“No, you do not,” Hippolyta said abruptly. “You do not have a child, Diana. You cannot understand. I know you are a mighty warrior, capable of standing up against Antiope herself. I know you are an Amazon, stronger and faster than any human.” She stopped, turning to Diana, her eyes shining. “But none of that matters against the fear that I might lose my daughter,” she said softly.

 

Diana took her mother’s hand. “You will not,” she said with conviction. “I promise you.”

 

“There is only one thing I wish for you to promise me right now,” Hippolyta said. “You are not leaving for that girl?”

 

“ _ Mother, _ ” Diana sighed. “I have  _ always _ wanted to see the world outside--”

 

“I know, my child,” Hippolyta said, “but I must warn you, and not only about her… she is exciting because she is novel. You have not seen a new face for thousands of years. But she is a human, Diana. She is mortal, and we are not.” She gently stroked Diana’s cheek. “You have a heart so full of love, and to love humanity, it is a wonderful thing. But take care with loving  _ individual _ humans. Sooner or later, you will outlive them, and your heart will be broken. I do not want that for you, Diana.”

 

“I understand, Mother,” Diana said, putting a hand over her mother’s, “but I am not leaving the island for her.”

 

Hippolyta nodded. “If I cannot stop you,” she said, lowering her hand and shifting her grip so that she was holding her daughter’s hand, as she had when Diana was a child, “then I will see to it that you are as prepared as I can make you.”

 

“Is that why we are going to the Royal Armoury?” Diana said, her eyes lighting up again.

 

Hippolyta smiled. “That, my child,” she agreed, “is why we are going to the Royal Armoury.”

 

{}

 

“This armor is so light!” Aloy said, bouncing slightly in the Amazon-styled battle dress, rapping on a panel of steel with her knuckles. “I’ve never seen metal worked the way your people do, either.”

 

Cydippe, a tall, slim woman that reminded Aloy heavily of Vanasha with her dark skin and eyes and hair kept close to her skull, smiled. “Our smiths have worked for centuries on perfecting their craft. You wear it well.”

 

“Do you think you will come with the group to my land?” Aloy asked. Diana was enthusiastic, and friendly beyond a doubt, which was nice. But it would be good to have another friend at the start of the trip back. Because with no Stormbird to override, it was going to be by boat, and who knew how long that would take. And then they’d maybe see lands she’d never been to? She’d been exploring, trying to map out the world, and crash-landed here.

 

“No, I will not. I am not one of the better warriors. I much prefer weaving, though I can and will fight if I have to.” Cydippe said with a small shrug. 

 

Aloy smiled softly. “I have a friend from my tribe, Teb. He is like you. He does not like to fight, and makes clothes for the tribe, but stood up with our warriors when it was needed.”

 

Cydippe smiled back. “He sounds to be a noble friend.”

 

At this point, a very damp Amazon knocked on the door and slipped in, a long package wrapped in cloth in her hand. Aloy’s eyes lit up.

 

“Is that my spear?”

 

The Amazon nodded, exhausted. “Yes. It’s very well made, I can see why you would want to keep it. Perhaps you could share with us the technique?”

 

“O-of course. Thank you! Thank you so much,” Aloy enthused, as she took back her spear and looked it over. The override device was still attached. It would only be with experience to see if it still worked or if she would have to find another Corruptor. She hugged it to her chest, forehead falling gently against the blunt end. 

 

_ Rost had helped her make this spear. _

  
  


{}

 

_ This is all there is to it? _ Aloy thought, watching some of Antiope’s chosen dozen preparing the wooden boat that was going to carry the fifteen of them off of Themyscira and towards… Aloy wasn’t sure where. Antiope had mentioned striking out for Kemet, once the land of a mighty civilization, but whatever civilization there had been was surely gone and the land now called something else. 

 

There seemed to be no formal ceremony, but every woman on the island was there, both to get a glimpse of the only outsider in four thousand years and to see off those they had known for four thousand years. Many affectionate hugs and cheek-kisses were exchanged. One or two women were giving deeper farewell kisses to wives or lovers, though Cydippe had mentioned that eight of the women they were bringing were in fact each others’ wives. “We have always been in favour of fighting alongside your lover,” she explained, “as it encourages bravery. Any warrior fights their best when they fight for one that they love.”

 

Menalippe, the priestess who’d spoken up for Aloy, was also coming--as well as being a skilled warrior, she was Antiope’s wife. Artemis and her wife, a short woman who looked even smaller next to the intimidating bulk of Artemis, were among the chosen dozen. Aloy did not know most of the other women, except, to her surprise, Clio the scribe.

 

“Like all Amazons, I am a warrior,” the woman said, carefully packing wicker baskets full of blank scrolls into the floor of the boat. “But I feel that my talents as a scribe will also be needed. This will be a historic journey, of that I am certain.”

 

“Maybe I’ll find other cauldrons--the great machine bunkers that Gaia used to recreate the world. They are awe-inspiring,” Aloy added.

 

“I hope so,” Clio said, straightening up with a smile. “I would love to see them.”

 

There was some commotion at the back of the crowd of Amazons, and then the crowd parted to allow Hippolyta and Diana through. Hippolyta was still wearing regal golden leathers and white fur, but Diana had removed her light brown leather armour and replaced it with a metal breastplate of red and gold, a blue leather skirt and more red-and-gold armour on her arms and legs. On her back was a long, beautiful sword and an elaborately carved shield; on her head was a golden tiara; hanging at her hip the golden length of the Lasso of Hestia.

 

“The Eagle’s Armour,” Antiope said approvingly. “It suits you, Diana.”

 

Aloy felt her jaw drop, remembered that she was in the middle of a very observant crowd, and shut her mouth with a click. “You, uh, you look great!”

 

“Thank you, Antiope, Aloy,” Diana said with a dazzling grin, almost childishly excited. “Are we prepared to go?”

 

“Everything is ready, Princess,” Menalippe said. “We are able to set forth at any time.”

 

The last couple of women tore themselves out of their wives’ embraces and straightened their armour before proudly making their way aboard the ship. All of them turned to bow their heads to Hippolyta and Diana.

 

“Amazons,” Hippolyta said, “you are the first women to leave this island in four thousand years. You will bring us the knowledge of how to finally perform our sacred duty to protect the people of this world. You are not just warriors. You are not just Amazons. You are the ones who will see all, who will learn all, who will call upon us when we are needed. I need not tell you to be brave, or valiant, or noble, for I know well that you all are. But do not forget also to be cautious, to be wise, and to be kind, for these too are the noblest qualities of the Amazons.” She turned to her daughter, her eyes shining with tears. “Promise me only one thing, my daughter,” she said softly. “Return to me.”

 

“Of course, Mother,” Diana said. She closed her eyes as Hippolyta kissed her forehead, leaning into the touch, before straightening up, nodding, and turning to walk onto the boat with her head held high.

 

There was no more ceremony to it than that. Aloy sat down as the boat cast off and Amazons hurried around her, setting the sails and pulling ropes and whatever else needed to be done to move a boat. As they did, any moment they had a free hand they’d wave back at the gathered Amazons on the shore, many calling things out in languages that Aloy didn’t know. The skies were bright blue and clear…

 

...until they hit  _ something _ , the same  _ something _ Aloy had hit the previous day when the Stormbirds had chased her into the fog, like a shimmering wall that passed through her like falling into warm water. On the other side was thick, blinding fog, but it passed quickly, leaving them out in the morning light of a day that wasn’t quite as beautiful as the one on Themyscira.

 

“Aloy,” Antiope called, “help with the mainsail.”

 

“Sure, but…” Aloy stood up, thrusting out her hands to either side to keep herself from immediately falling over on the constantly moving boat. “Which one’s that? Not that I want to sit around doing nothing, but I’ve never sailed before.”

 

“Never?” Antiope said in surprise. 

 

Aloy shook her head. “I grew up around mountains. I can climb like a goat, but I’ve never sailed.”

 

“We will teach you,” Diana offered, taking Aloy’s hand and putting it on a rope. “Here, I will show you how to tie this. In return, please tell us of your people. You said they were called the Nora, yes? I would love to learn more about them.”

 

“I can tell you all I know,” Aloy said with a smile. “The Nora live far to the west of here…”


	2. The Wanderer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Amazons and Aloy make landfall in the Kingdom of Kemet, via the river Nile. But what awaits them upon arrival is only swamp mud and ruined villages. Bandits, it seems, aren't just in the Sacred Lands.

Aloy watched, eyes sharp, as the ship came into slow in swampy marshland. The sun beat down on the back of her neck, the heat thick and oppressive, like she’d arrived in Carja lands. She’d be rubbing mud on her face and neck soon enough just to keep from burning. Long legged birds carefully picked their way among the reeds that edged the water, long beaks stabbing at insects hidden there. 

 

A large, blunt shape loomed out of the water and for a moment she thought it was a new machine come to attack them, one she hadn’t seen, before she saw brown rubbery skin, round black eyes, and a large mouth stretch in a yawn. A quick scan with her Focus--how the thing had remained on her face through her near drowning, she didn’t know--told her it was a ‘Hippopotamus.’ Its shape underwater was  _ huge _ , big enough to realize while it probably made good eating, it also probably made bad hunting. 

 

There were no Snapmaws in the area, or Watchers, for which she was grateful, but the swamps were wide, and the lizard-like machines could be hiding anywhere.

 

“Where are we?” Aloy asked.

 

“This river flows through the mighty kingdom of Kemet… or once did,” Clio explained. 

 

“Kemet was such a powerful kingdom… I cannot imagine it being entirely destroyed,” Artemis said, shaking her head, hefting her axe warily. “These are a people who took land from the hippopotami, after all. Surely they could handle some robots!”

 

Eyeing the watery ground at the side of the ship, Aloy judged it not solid enough and remained in the ship, shifting impatiently for when she could have both feet on solid land again. Though, ‘solid’ seemed to be up for interpretation going by the black mud lining the riverbanks.

 

“Keep an eye out for anything with a blue glow. Watchers stand at about my height with long necks, ended in a single eye. At a distance, one arrow directly into the eye will destroy this machine, and it can be taken in close melee,” Aloy said to the group. “We’re more likely to see them first, but Snapmaws could easily be here.”

 

“And what do Snapmaws look like?” Artemis asked gruffly.

 

“Like...that,” she said pointedly, eyes locked on a brownish-black shape weaving through the reeds a few yards from the group. Her Focus called it a ‘Crocodile.’ “But a whole lot bigger.”

 

“The ones who attacked you were as gigantic birds,” Diana said thoughtfully, smiling at the crocodile as if it was a cute baby animal and not a predator the size of a log. “Are all robots giant animals?”

 

“Possibly. Gaia had a fondness for their shapes,” Aloy said with a shrug. 

 

“Does that mean there could be robots of hipopotami?” Artemis asked.

 

“Please do not provide shapes for my nightmares, my love,” Euboea groaned. “They are far too big as it is.”

 

Aloy bit down a laugh. “Snapmaws spit chillwater, can run much faster than you might think, and if you get up close  _ will _ jump on you to tear you apart. They  _ really _ don’t like fire. Fire arrows at a distance are the best strategy for them.”

 

Antiope, sitting at the front of the boat, abruptly held up a fist and all of the Amazons fell silent, watching their general intently. “On the riverbank,” she said quietly. “There is something there.”

 

Menalippe opened up one of the storage compartments in the boat, hefting out a large stone brazier and setting it on the deck. Two more Amazons moved to help her light it, the rest picking up their bows and nocking unlit fire arrows. 

 

The small ship sailed a slow, silent pace through the water, all eyes on the slowly growing target. 

 

Aloy recognized what it was before anyone else in the ship. She’d seen too many of these on her travels.  First it was a tall post, darkened and leaning into the sky. And then it was another, more lean and less reach, a few ragged ropes swaying in the soft breeze. A hill in the swamp fell away and a broken wall frame came into sight, scorched and burned, a partial window remaining. More buildings came into sight as they approached, roofs fallen in and burned away, ragged scraps of cloth testament to the ghosts that passed by. 

 

A village, destroyed, most likely by bandits. Aloy knew their work.

 

She sighed and let her shoulders slump, hands rubbing at her face. She took no joy in hunting bandits, unlike others she had met. It was a necessity for survival, nothing more. The evidence of their existence was ill news.

 

The ship came to port at the still intact dock, a small canoe half-sunk in the swamp nearby. At a nod from Antiope, the archers put down their bows. Two women leapt out of the boat, standing with their swords ready while Clio leapt over the side and anchoring the ship to the dock. 

 

“Did robots do this?” Diana asked Aloy quietly.

 

“Bandits,” she replied, just as quiet. “They like to use fire. Machines mostly just trample.”

 

“Some things have not changed, then,” Antiope said, shaking her head. “Clio, Aella, Faruka, stay with the ship and stand guard. We will sweep this place for survivors or bandits before we decide how to progress. Artemis, Euboea, Melia, Venelia, Nubia--follow the wall around the outside of this village. Menalippe, Diana, Aloy, Hellene, Orithia, Orania--with me to search the buildings, or what remains of them. You have your firework arrows should you encounter something with which you need aid.”

 

“Yes, General!” the Amazons chorused.

 

The dark mud squelched under Aloy’s leather boots as the small group slipped into the village. A quick glance with her focus showed her the group of Amazons spreading out, possible resource spots hidden away in the destroyed homes, and the outlines of bodies. Nothing moving that hadn’t come with her. 

 

The first ruined building only had some wire and metal shards, but the second she slipped into had wire, blaze, and good arrow-shaft material. It also had the bodies of a small family, two adults and a child, all stabbed. 

 

Aloy briefly closed her eyes in respect to the family before swiftly reuniting with Diana.

 

“Definitely bandits,” she said, hand wrapped around her spear. “Recent, too. They might have a camp nearby.”

 

“Why do they do such things?” Diana asked quietly. “Are they corrupted, somehow, as you say the robots were?”

 

“Men may have been created to be good, Diana, but not all remain so,” Antiope said, gently but firmly. “We must deal with these bandits, before they bring harm to any more innocents. Once we have secured this place, we will seek them out.”

 

Aloy sighed and nodded along with the group. At least she wouldn’t be doing this alone.

 

{}

 

Despair buzzed nonstop in J’onn’s head. He tried to focus on M’gann--he could feel her shuddering next to him as she fought to cry quietly, without drawing their captors’ attention. He tried to think of something to say that would comfort her, but if he feared that if he opened his mouth, all he would do was scream and scream, scream like his wife and daughters as the fire consumed them, scream like his sister as the bandits’ arrows riddled her, scream like his people as they were destroyed…

 

He wished they were alive. He was glad that they were not here. He was relieved that his niece was alive. He wished she was not here. At best, they were going to be sold to another clan as labour. At worst…

 

He only happened to look up at just the right moment to see a sentry at the edge of camp fall boneless off his post. He stared, and rubbed his eyes of tears. They’d fallen boneless the same way his family had. He pressed his face against his wooden cage and saw another sentry drop silently. A third, near the main entrance to the camp, fell to the ground, and J’onn saw the fletching that rose from his head.

 

A small murmur broke out among their captors near there, two went to investigate the dead body, others watching. 

 

His breath caught in his throat as he watched those two drop simultaneously.  _ Someone _ , probably a lot of someones, was killing the monsters that had killed his tribe. 

 

A cry went up as news went around. Feet pounded against the ground, weapons rattled.

 

A  _ roar _ exploded from multiple warriors as a small army came charging into the camp. J’onn stared, and felt M’gann turn to stare in shock as well. Each and every warrior was a  _ woman, _ and each and every one of them was cutting through bandits like a scythe through wheat. 

 

They both jumped as another warrior snuck to the front of their cages, spear in hand but focused on them. 

 

Her fire-bright hair slipped over her shoulders as she put a finger to her lips and blew air out softly. He tilted his head in confusion but nodded when she started to saw at the knot of the lock of the cage. It came open soon enough and she motioned for them to follow her, little tugging motions on their arms to make sure they got the point. 

 

She said  _ something, _ a click and gentle moan sound, but it made no sense to him. Her face was pale, like the white paint the bandits used to make their faces look like skulls, but her touch was gentle and she was  _ freeing _ them. 

 

The three of them crept away from the fighting, almost unseen except for one of their captors, and the woman with fire-bright hair killed him swiftly, a strike through his belly and then his neck. 

 

They were led to a small dugout, guarded by another two women. The fire-haired warrior spoke to the other two in their strange language, gesturing to J’onn and M’gann. J’onn protectively put an arm around his niece’s shoulder--that these women had killed the bandits who destroyed their village was no guarantee that they were safe. Perhaps they were more bandits, taking out their rivals and stealing their bounty…

 

One of the warriors, a black-skinned woman with long locks and golden armour, looked directly at J’onn and M’gann and said something. “I do not understand,” J’onn said warily.

 

“Ahhh, Arabic,” she said with a smile. “You are safe now. Are you and this girl the only survivors of your village?”

 

“We are,” J’onn said, his hands shaking on M’gann’s shoulders as she sobbed. “I am J’onn. This is my niece M’gann. We… we are all that is left. Who are you?”

 

“I am Nubia of the Amazons,” she said, “and this is my Princess Diana.” She gestured to the third woman, who had pale skin, smooth black hair and red-and-blue armour. “The one who brought you here is Aloy of the Nora. I am afraid that she does not speak Arabic, only English.”

 

“Wh-what.... What is the uh… the English for th-thank you?” M’gann hiccuped.

 

Diana smiled. “ _ Thank you _ ,” she said. Aloy looked from her to M’gann curiously.

 

“Aloy?” M’gann said, wiping her eyes. “ _ Thank you _ .” 

 

Aloy nodded, saying something back. “We are only sorry that we could not arrive sooner to save your village,” Diana said sadly. “Our sacred duty is to defend the innocent, and we have failed at that task for far too long.”

 

“We are simply glad that you have come. What...what will you do with us once you have dealt with the bandits?” He swallowed dryly. As nice as they were, he did not know.

 

“Nothing!” Diana seemed shocked by the question. “We would ask you for information of this place and the surrounding area. The kingdom of Kemet is what we last knew was here, and Aloy has never been to this side of the world.”

 

J’onn blinked. “Kemet… is indeed what we called ourselves, but we are no kingdom,” he said cautiously. “When were you last here?”

 

“It has been over four thousand years,” Nubia sighed, looking up at the sky.

 

J’onn blinked. Nothing really made sense anymore, and he decided to just accept that. “I can tell you of the next village down the river,” he said slowly.

 

“What about the ancient temple?” M’gann asked. 

 

“Ancient temple?” Diana asked, looking quickly at Aloy and saying something. Aloy responded, looking curiously at J’onn and M’gann. “Would this temple be a buried place full of machines?”

 

“It is,” J’onn said cautiously. “You know of it?”

 

“Aloy does,” Diana said with a smile. “When we have finished with the bandits, we would very much like to see this temple, and then we will help you to the next village along the river. Is that an acceptable plan to you?”

 

“For our lives? Our freedom? Yes,” J’onn said, something like relief growing in his heart.

 

{}

 

“You are quite adept at stealth, Aloy,” Antiope commented as they followed J’onn and M’gann towards the temple they had described. “I would not have thought it from your entrance to Themyscira.”

 

Aloy screwed her face up, sheepish. “I tend to either make a statement or sneak into a place. Never a happy medium.”

 

“There are few happy mediums in war,” Antiope said with a somewhat bloodthirsty smile. “Are there many bandits such as these roaming loose in the world now?”

 

“ _ Ugh, _ unfortunately,” Aloy grumbled. “Yes. There were six or so bandit camps in near proximity to the Carja and Nora lands, and there were the occasional roaming bandit groups. Clearing them out took some time.”

 

“Did you clear them by yourself?” Diana asked in surprise.

 

“A few. There was this Carja wanderer by the name of Nil that liked to kill bandits. Enjoyed the ‘hunt’ of it,” she said, mildly disgusted. “He was...different. But he aided me on a couple of camps. And then he wanted a fight to the death and I told him no,” she shrugged.

 

“If it is death he wishes for, he is welcome to fight any Amazon,” Artemis declared, to some laughter. J’onn and M’gann looked back at them curiously, confused by the English conversation. Both had heads shaved bald and black skin and wore clothing that was little more than loincloths for modesty and strips of cloth with pouches attached to them for carrying things. Both of them had dark eyes that were red and puffy from crying, and J’onn was peppered with bandages covering light burns that he’d sat and treated with his niece’s help while they waited for the rest of the Amazons to return from the fight, which they had done in short order, carrying various weapons and trophies that they’d taken from the bodies. J’onn and M’gann had both been armed with spears, and M’gann was also wearing a green necklace that had been taken from the bandits. Aloy wondered if it had belonged to somebody she knew. J’onn had taken two small bracelets and, because they were too small for his hands to fit into, had looped them around one of his sashes. He kept lifting a hand up to touch them gently. 

 

Her heart ached as her mind went back to Rost, her own hand wrapping around the wooden charm he’d given her. She understood the  _ exact _ pain they felt right now, and she wondered if the death of those in the bandit camp was enough for the two of them. 

 

“Aloy, what is wrong?” Diana asked, stepping closer.

 

“I…” she sighed and glanced at J’onn and M’gann. “Would you translate?”

 

“Certainly.”

 

“...I lost my father, Rost, and many new warriors of my age to a cult. It was an ambush. I  _ understand, _ ” she said, strained. “I am sorry.”

 

J’onn and M’gann both stopped, then J’onn put a hand on Aloy’s shoulder, saying something.

 

“He says he is sorry that you had to bear such a loss,” Diana said softly, “as am I.”

 

Aloy nodded, placed her hand over J’onn’s on her shoulder, and squeezed gently. “Thank you.”

 

He smiled weakly at her, a weakness borne not of insincerity but of deep, raw pain. He asked her another question. “He wishes to know what became of your mother,” Diana translated. 

 

Aloy froze. “It’s complicated. It’s...enough to say I don’t have one.” And saying even this hurt, but explaining the whole thing would be a long and involved story that would take more than a few minutes.

 

Diana had a brief conversation with J’onn and M’gann. “They think that is a very strange statement,” Diana said, which Aloy could have guessed from the confused looks on the pair’s faces, “but they are sorry for you. M’gann has just lost her parents and J’onn his wife and daughters. I will not press you on why you have no mother if you do not wish to explain,” Diana added, “but if it makes you feel any better, I have no father. My mother sculpted me from clay.”

 

She blinked. “Okay. It’s not that it’s sensitive. Just strange to explain. I’m a clone. Gaia took a bit of Elisabet Sobeck and turned it into baby me. A copy?” She shrugged. “Most don’t understand.”

 

“You said that Gaia made many humans when it was time to repopulate the world,” Diana said placidly, “why should it not be able to copy another human? I will be quite interested to meet it.”

 

“...Once I fix her. She kinda blew up.” Aloy blushed.

 

“You not only destroy gods, you repair them too?” Diana said, bursting into laughter. “You are astonishing, Aloy!”

 

She went redder. 

 

M’gann abruptly cried out. “We are here,” Diana said as the girl took off running, her uncle running after her and probably shouting at her to slow down. Aloy couldn’t understand the words, but she knew that tone from Rost.

 

M’gann screamed.

 

Aloy took off like a shot, spear in hand. 

 

The edge of the swamp turned abruptly to sand, which ate her momentum. She rounded the side of a large sand dune and grit her teeth. Two Snapmaws and three Watchers.  _ Great. _

 

Two Watchers were already dash-running for a blinded M’gann, J’onn covering her with his body. Whipping out her borrowed bow, Aloy shot the first Watcher in center mass, knocking it over. The brief interruption gave her time to slide in and  _ slam _ her spear into the second Watcher, deactivating it. 

 

“Run!” she roared at the two, pointing back they way they came. Which was also where the battalion of Amazons was coming from, arrows already peppering the Snapmaws. 

 

Aloy stabbed downward into the first Watcher, taking it out of the fight, yanked out her spear and used the momentum to swing it down in a hammerstrike onto the third approaching Watcher, putting it out. 

 

A ‘poof’ sound and a slight whistle had Aloy rolling to the side as a chillwater blast came from a Snapmaw, one that had made itself comfortable next to a familiar bunker door. She growled, and went running for the closest source of fire. 

 

“Fire arrows on those machines! They burn!” Aloy yelled, grabbing up offered fire arrows. 

 

The Amazons were well ahead of her, a rain of pointy fire coming down on the crocodilian machines. It did not take long for the machines to explode into sparks and keel over, the fading mist of chillwater all over the sand. 

 

Whew!” Aloy bounced on her feet, working through the thrill of the fight. “Everyone okay?” she asked, eyes on the two non-combatants.. A couple of the women ran to check on M’gann and J’onn. They seemed to have suffered no further injuries, but J’onn looked like he was never moving his arm from around his niece ever again.

 

“These ones were not so difficult to stop,” Antiope said thoughtfully, nudging one collapsed Snapmaw with her foot. “You acquitted yourself heroically, Aloy.”

 

She blushed again. “Thanks. Um. I’d been hoping for a bit more  _ controlled _ introduction to machines…” She sighed and brightened. “Time to loot the machines!”

 

A bounce, and she kneeled at the body of a Watcher, yanking out the intact lense, shards, and wire. The heart, unfortunately, had been smashed in her stab, and the sparker had exploded. She had better luck on the other two small machines, and the Snapmaws, she knew, would be a treasure trove of supplies. 

 

J’onn and M’gann immediately started looting with her, J’onn pointing things out to his niece. He had a brief conversation with Diana, then Diana turned to Aloy and said quietly, “apparently he used to hunt these with his brother, who was skilled at destroying machines, but his brother has not been seen in these parts for a long time. He does not seem to want to speak about his brother…”

 

Aloy nodded. “Machine hunting is dangerous. It kills more often than not. Even I’ve come into situations where I’ve had to run for it.” She yanked out a Snapmaw heart and handed it to J’onn. “For when you need supplies.”

 

“Thank you,” he said, taking the Snapmaw heart with that same tired smile. 

 

“Aloy,” Diana called. She was standing by the bunker door, running a hand over the pitted metal. “Is this it?”

 

“Yeap. It’s open, though. Nature must have done some damage. These things can take a lot of beating,” she assessed, eyeing the space in the triangular shaped doors. “I think we can slip on through.”

 

M’gann was already walking into the bunker, this time tugging her uncle along by the hand. “They say they have been here before,” Diana explained. “It is discouraged, but many a child has dared their friend to explore inside. There is little to see, they say.”

 

“Are there any doors you can’t get behind?” Aloy asked, head turning on her neck like a swivel on a pivot. “Looks like a triangle in a circle, or a glowing red circle?”

 

Diana communicated this to M’gann and J’onn, who nodded. “They know of doors with eyes, they say,” Diana said. “J’onn says that when he was a boy he ran away when he first saw an eye glow, but M’gann said that she stayed to look at it and it does nothing.”

 

Aloy grinned wickedly. “It will now,” she said, and trotted ahead. “I think this is a cradle facility!”

 

The group tromped down a ramp lined in steel, their footsteps echoing into the emptiness. “The one in Nora land is called All-Mother mountain, it’s the center of everything for the tribe, and until recently, only the Matriarchs were allowed inside it. It’s where the local tribes got their start.”

 

“These are where new people were made?” asked Clio, who had produced a scroll and quill from her belt and was uncorking a bottle of ink tied to her waist.

 

“In places like this all over the world.” Aloy nodded, coming to stop in front of a large sealed door, with what looked like a triangle inside a circle. Just like the hatch in All-Mother Mountain.

 

A bright red glow lit by itself at the top of the triangle, a voice coming out of an invisible speaker. “Starting Identiscan.”

 

Red light washed over Aloy from head to toe, and back again. “Welcome Dr. Sobeck. Access granted.”

 

The hatch cracked open as Aloy stepped back and gave it room, wind gusting over the whole party.

 

“By the gods,” Antiope whispered as lights flickered on in the room inside. M’gann and J’onn both let out exclamations that were likely along those lines.

 

“Welcome to Eluthia,” Aloy said, stepping forward. “Should get you all Focuses so you can see what I do.” She led them past rooms that branched off from a main hallway, following the curve of a glass wall. Bright white-blue lights glowed absently on the other side in evenly spaced intervals.

 

Another locked door blocked their passage until red light flashed over Aloy again. “Access granted.”

 

“These rooms speak to you,” Diana said in awe as the Amazons trailed after Aloy. Clio was stopping every few feet to lean her scroll against a wall, write rapidly, and then run to catch up before repeating the process. “Is that the voice of your gods?”

 

“No. It’s just another machine,” Aloy said softly, a little sad. “I was...copied because all the doors respond to Elisabet Sobeck’s exact make-up. Since I am the same, they open to me.”

 

She stopped at a point between two consoles and picked up two small triangles--Focuses. “Here, Diana, Antiope, put these on, like I have mine.”

 

“On our ears?” Diana said, reaching up and carefully hooking it over her right ear. As soon as she did, a little light blinked to life and she gasped, stepping backwards in shock.

 

“Diana? Are you okay?” Antiope said, reaching out to grip her niece’s shoulder.

 

“I am fine, Antiope,” Diana said faintly. “I can see… things…” She looked over at Aloy. “Can you see such things too, Aloy?”

 

“Yes. It’s how the Old Ones interacted with their machines and communicated with each other over vast distances. The things that still function from that time, and the machines of now, you can use this Focus to see and sometimes interact with them. It is a help.” Aloy shrugged. “I’ve had mine since I was six. I fell into a ruined bunker.”

 

Antiope slowly put the Focus into her right ear, and like Diana, she gasped and stepped backwards, eyes widening as the interface appeared around her. “Antiope? What do you see?” Menalippe asked. 

 

“A net of violet light that reaches out and touches everything I see. It tells me where I am, what I look at. Who is Samina Ebadji? Why is Apollo ‘offline?’ The message sounds cut off.” Antiope blinked hard. “And how do I make this stop--Oh.”

 

“The Focus responds mostly to thought, but also touch if you feel more comfortable with that. As for Samina…” Aloy sighed. “She created Apollo. It was a collection of all of human knowledge and culture. The new generation of humans were supposed to learn of it, once they were old enough. But Apollo was destroyed. And everything was lost.”

 

“The loss of knowledge is a great tragedy,” Nubia said, looking at Clio, who was rapidly scribbling down everything that Aloy, Diana and Antiope were saying. “Perhaps if we explore this place, we can recover some of it.”

 

“I’ve been searching every bunker and ruin I can find. It’s all just...scraps.” Aloy said, dejected.

 

“Scraps are perfect material with which to build,” Hellene declared. “What scraps shall we find here?”

 

The Amazons slowly started to fan out, exploring the otherwise empty space. Antiope and Diana moved slowly, stopping to read text that appeared in the air before them or listen to messages. J’onn and M’gann were speaking quietly to each other, looking through one of the glass walls, M’gann’s hand resting on the glass. 

 

Aloy had been to many Cradles before, but they had all been empty and silent save for the images and voices of the dead. This one was full of the fascination of the living. For the first time in a  _ long _ time, she had hope that she wasn’t at the head of a runaway Charger, a cliff edge just in sight. Maybe, just maybe, there was hope that the future Gaia wanted could come to pass. That humanity could be  _ better _ . 

 

That the howling horror and burning destruction that she’d seen would never come again.

 

She  _ hoped. _

  
  


{}

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_ Introducing J’onn and M’gann of Earth! We’ve been brainstorming HZD versions of a lot of our favourite DC characters, and first up are our favourite martians, based on a loose mix of their comics,  _ Young Justice _ and  _ CW Supergirl  _ selves. If there’s anything we can do better with this chapter, or anything you particularly want to see, please shout it out! _

ItS: Aloy kinda took over this chapter, but because it's a Cradle Facility, it makes sense. There will be more of the Amazons, Diana, and the others in the coming chapters, promise. 

 

_ Next time is The Farmer. _


	3. The Farmer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aloy and the Amazons reach a farming village where the high priest has a dark secret. Something is still alive in the Cradles of this new land.

Antiope halted the battalion when a not-so-small pack of machines made their presence known in the marsh of tall grass and river’s edge via a chorus of high-pitched screeching. 

 

Aloy tapped her Focus and nodded. “Two Longlegs, two Sawtooths, and six Scrappers. Wow, that’s a lot for one spot.”

 

“How do we fight them?” Antiope asked. 

 

“The Scrappers are the small ones. They like to gang up on you, once you attack one the others will immediately head to the downed one. They’re easy enough to take out with a few spear-swings, but they’re vicious and fast,” she said, pointing. “And they’ll fire...bolts of light at you from a distance. The Longlegs are the birds walking around. They’ll scream at you to deafen you briefly, and then jump on you to attack with their feet or a fire attack that’ll hit an area of effect. The best way to fight them is to shoot arrows at their breast until they explode, from a distance, and then finish them off.”

 

“And the Sawtooth?” Diana asked. 

 

“Lots of fire and running,” Aloy said. “They like to get up close and try to maul you.”

 

“So we must attack the Sawtooth and Longlegs from a distance, but get close to the Scrappers,” Antiope summarized. “Menalippe, lead Euboea, Aella, Melia, Hellene, Nubia and Clio. Rain fire arrows down until the Sawtooth and Longlegs are down. Aloy, oversee the archery and give direction if needed, but you will join the rest of us in charging in to provide the finishing blows. M’gann, J’onn, stay behind the archery line--”

 

“I can shoot too,” M’gann offered. “If somebody gives me a bow, I can help.”

 

“She is a very good shot,” J’onn added, putting a hand on his niece’s shoulder. “Better than I am. I was never much of a warrior, but I was a stealth hunter--I could move silently, killing in a single blow without the target knowing I was ever there.”

 

“There is no place for stealth in a charge,” Menalippe said, shaking her head. “Stay by your niece.” J’onn did not seem perturbed by being left out of the battle plans--Aloy, noticing the way that he had spoken of his skills in stealth as being in the past, thought he might even be relieved. 

  
  


{}

  
  


M’gann was carefully nocking another arrow, trying to spot a target that she could be sure of hitting without risking hitting one of the warriors who had saved them, when she became aware that she was being watched. She swung around, pointing her bow up the dry, craggy brown cliff looming over them. 

 

The young man who’d been halfway around stepping out from behind a rock slowly raised his hands. He didn’t look as pale and foreign as Aloy, Diana and some of the other women did. He looked more like a member of her own tribe, though with much more colourful blue-and-red clothes. He was also even taller than her uncle and bulging with muscle.

 

“Don’t shoot,” he said. “I’m not a machine. Who are you people?” His bright blue eyes flickered past M’gann. “Who are all of these warriors? Where do you come from?”

 

“My uncle and I were from the village of Ma’aleca’andra, but…. It’s gone now,” she sad, tears prickling at her eyes as it hit her, yet again, that everything and everyone she’d ever known was gone. The Amazons were so unreal that at any moment she expected to wake up at home in her own bed, and every time she remembered that that wouldn’t happen, it was like losing it anew all over again.

 

“Ma’aleca’andra’s gone?” the man said, eyes widening. “I am so sorry. My name is Kon. What’s yours?”

 

“M’gann,” M’gann said, slowly lowering her bow. He seemed to be alone and unarmed, though his arms themselves were probably very dangerous. 

 

“My name is J’onn,” her uncle added, looking Kon up and down. “The women are all Amazons, from a land named Themyscira. They easily destroyed the bandits who killed Ma’aleca’andra.”

 

“They easily destroy most things that cross their path,” M’gann said, gesturing to the women and noticing that they seemed to have taken out the entire horde. The Amazon archers had moved in to help with the kills and hadn’t noticed Kon’s approach yet. “They are travelling to learn more about fighting machines and to seek out and connect different peoples, or so they say. Where are you from?”

 

“The village of Krypton,” Kon said, pointing back over the cliff. “I’m… not supposed to be here,” he added sheepishly, “but nobody else knows about this fishing spot, and I wanted to get some of my nephew’s favourites.”

 

“M’gann, J’onn,” a voice shouted. “Who is that?”

 

She turned to see the general, Antiope, approaching, along with Diana and Menalippe, while Aloy was showing the others how to harvest parts from the destroyed machines.

 

“His name is Kon, from Krypton,” M’gann explained.

 

“We were explaining to young Kon that we seek connection and sanctuary,” J’onn continued. “Do you think we might find it in Krypton?” It was her uncle calling him ‘young’ that helped M’gann realize that, despite his height and obvious strength, Kon was not a full adult but was perhaps closer to her age than her uncle’s. There was a slight-- _ very  _ slight--softness to his cheeks that gave it away, a lack of lines and, though he had a light fuzz of hair on his head, as there was on M’gann’s and her uncle’s without proper razors for shaving, there was none on his chin as there was on J’onn’s. 

 

“Maybe,” Kon said, a little uneasily. “The high priest has been… odd. He was always a stern man, but of late has been getting stricter and stricter. Nobody’s supposed to leave the village--that was why I had to sneak out to fish. I don’t know what he’ll think of outsiders coming in to Krypton, but I’m sure I’ll be in trouble for sneaking out.”

 

“Why did you sneak out if doing so is a crime?” Diana said in concern. “Is your village struggling for food?”

 

“No, and my brother and I work some of the best farmland in the village,” Kon said, proud for a moment before his face fell. “...But there’s no fish in the part of the river that passes our land, and fish is my nephew’s favourite. His mother’s gone missing and the high priest refuses to do anything about it, so I thought I’d bring him something to cheer him up…”

 

“Why would your high priest not wish to search for a missing farmer?” Antiope said, narrowing her eyes.

 

“...I don’t know,” Kon said, not meeting her eyes. “I’m sorry, but… if I tell you the way to Krypton, could you go without me? I’ll stay here and fish and sneak back in while everybody’s distracted with you being there.”

 

Diana nodded. “We are grateful for your assistance, Kon of Krypton,” she said, “and we will keep your secret. I hope that your fishing will be blessed--for the time being, this area is free of Machines.”

 

{}

 

“So, we’re heading to Krypton, and that kid back there is gonna fish and sneak back in,” Aloy summarized, glancing over her shoulder as the grassy reeds disappeared from view. 

 

“Precisely.” Diana nodded, having decided to be Aloy’s translator. 

 

“Something seems off. Besides the machines in the area, why would a high priest ban someone from going fishing? And not only that, why would they not look for a lost villager? Every set of hands is important.” Aloy frowned. “Did she wander somewhere ‘forbidden?’”

 

Diana shrugged. “We will find out what we can in the village once we’re there, and search for her ourselves if we must.”

 

Rocky sand gave way to tilled fields of fertile earth as the troop followed Kon’s directions. They hadn’t been hard. Along with his point of the arm, it had been ‘go straight until you hit farmland.’ Once there, Kon’s relatives would be able to show them to the village proper. 

 

“Ho!” a man even bigger and bulkier than Kon had been called as he slung his hoe over his shoulder and jogged to meet the group halfway, just over the edge of worked soil. 

 

Aloy blinked up at him. She’d met some large people in the Sundom, and the Oseram did ‘big-and-bulky’ as much as they could, but this man topped them all. Skin dark like everybody she’d seen in this hot and bright land, muscles bulging, he stopped short of Antiope, blue eyes shining as he looked over them all. 

 

Antiope and the farmer exchanged words that flew over Aloy’s head and she sighed to herself and made a mental note to ask Diana to start teaching her Arabic. 

 

Diana leaned over discreetly to Aloy’s ear. “He says his name is Kal, and that he’s glad to have us at the farm. He’s not sure he can feed  _ all _ of us, but he’ll give what shelter he can.”

 

Aloy nodded, and watched as J’onn and M’gann stepped forward. More words, and these had Diana smiling. “He said he’d be glad to give J’onn and M’gann a more permanent home, or at least until they build one themselves in the village.”

 

Something fell away from the shoulders of M’gann and J’onn, the lines visibly curving down and relaxing. Aloy smiled.

 

Kal’s home had thick, dense walls that kept the interior pleasantly cool compared to outside. The size of the building turned out to be because most of it was a stable, with big doors that let the cattle in and out of the pen outside. A young boy, with the same bright blue eyes as Kal and Kon and the same kind of bright blue-and-red clothes, was sitting in the stable, checking the leg of a calf that looked like it’d been recently injured. Kal said a few words and the boy stood up, pointing at the calf and saying something before staring curiously at Aloy and the Amazons and asking a question.

 

“That is Kal’s son Jon,” Diana whispered to Aloy as father and son conversed. “He must be the nephew that Kon spoke of. Kal is explaining who we are and… asking him to fetch his aunt.” She spoke up, addressing Kal, with a sentence that sounded like it was about Kon. Kal shook his head, shrugged, smiled, then kept talking while he walked over to the far wall. A number of large sacks were resting in an alcove carved into the wall, so high up that anybody who wasn’t as tall as Kal surely couldn’t reach it. The sacks looked to weight more than Aloy, but Kal pulled them down and set them on the floor with ease.

 

“I asked if he and Kon also have a sister and he clarified that the aunt that he spoke of is not his sister but his cousin,” Diana said, noticing Aloy looking at her expectantly as Nubia, Artemis and a few other Amazons went over to help Kal and took over the conversation with him. “Interestingly, her wife is the high priest’s sister, so if they join us for dinner we may yet learn more about this high priest and what is going on here…”

 

Aloy nodded. “You don’t mind translating?”

 

Diana gave her one of her dazzling smiles. “I would never leave you out, Aloy.”

  
  


{}

  
  


The sacks, it transpired, were not as heavy as they looked because their size was due to being filled with light, sweet flatbread. As they ate, Kal explained the situation that Krypton was in. Aloy tried not to blush whenever Diana leaned close to whisper translations, and probably failed terribly.

 

“Lex and I grew up together,” he began. “He was always smart, smarter than anybody I’ve ever known. We all knew he’d be a great priest. He saw to the care of my parents’ bodies when they died, and he performed my wedding. He blessed and named my son. When he became the High Priest, we all thought that that meant that we were facing a bright future. But after the first time he went into the Secret Temples, he… changed.”

 

“Your brother told us that he has forbidden people from leaving the village and has done nothing to look for your wife since she went missing, nor has he offered any explanation for this behaviour,” Antiope mentioned. “This is worrying in a leader.”

 

Kal nodded. “And it’s unlike the Lex that I knew. I think he’s possessed by something that he found in the Secret Temples. He’s obsessed with protecting them, and of course, they’re what changed him. My wife… Lois has always been inquisitive. She wanted to look in the Secret Temples, and I… I agreed to distract Lex while she snuck inside.” He buried his face in his hands. “I kept Lex distracted as long as I could, talking about Lena and Kara, how Jon’s growing, how the farm’s doing, Kon’s coming-of-age ceremony… but Lois didn’t reappear before I could keep him occupied no longer. She never came back out of the Secret Temples.”

 

As soon as Diana’s translation caught up, Aloy burst out, “So she’s not  _ missing _ \--we know where she is, we just have to go in and get her, right?”

 

“I imagine that gaining entrance to these Secret Temples is not so simple,” Diana said, turning and directing a question at Kal that was likely intended to explain Aloy’s outburst. Kal only looked up from his self-recrimination when Jon, leaning close against his father’s side, hugged one of the man’s massive arms and said something soft. 

 

“Lex says he doesn’t know anything about Lois,” Kal said darkly, “but he’s increased the Temple Guard since, taking higher taxes to pay them better…”

 

“And he wouldn’t let Kal or I join,” Kon interjected. “He said we weren’t guard material.” He folded his arms in a way that made muscles Aloy hadn’t known existed bulge. Diana didn’t need to translate for Aloy to guess exactly what he thought of the thin excuse that the two biggest humans she’d ever seen weren’t ‘guard material’.

 

Aloy’s eyebrows rose towards her hairline. “Oh, of course, not guard material,” she said, voice dry as the sands outside. “Your arms alone would scare away anyone with half a brain.”

 

Diana’s translation had Kon snorting in amused agreement. “Maybe we could attack the guards, maybe we could even win,” Kal said sadly, “but we’ll be fighting men we know, and men who know us. Even if we get in, find Lois, and leave, we’d either have to fight the whole village, or leave forever, become outcasts.” One hand drifted, perhaps unconsciously, to rest gently on his son’s head, as if hoping to protect him from the mere idea of being an outcast.

 

Aloy winced, once told, and glanced away. Her heart stuttered when she felt a rough, strong hand close gently around hers. Diana was looking at Kal, but her eyes slid briefly Aloy’s way, a reassuring smile rising to her lips. It took a while for Aloy’s brain to reboot enough to remember that she should stop staring at those lips and focus on the conversation they were translating. 

 

It was only then that she realized that Diana was actually having quite an involved conversation with Kal, and she was the only person in the room who couldn’t understand. She couldn’t quite muster the laser focus on the discussion that the others had, only understanding a handful of sparse words, so she was the first to notice the two stranger women as they walked through the door and stopped to stare at the crowded room.

 

The taller of the two women--a narrow qualifier, as both were very tall--was muscular enough to probably be Kal and Kon’s cousin, a theory borne out by her sharing their bright blue eyes. Unlike her cousins, M’gann and J’onn, though, her hair was long and woven in thick, black ropes to keep it hanging over one shoulder. The slightly shorter was much slimmer and more delicate, with her dark hair swept up in an elaborate knot on top of her head. Both of them were wearing bright red-and-blue light clothes, the same as the mens’, and matching sets of beaded necklaces. 

 

“Hi?” Aloy offered, waving to get the point across. That interrupted the discussion across the table, drawing attention to the new arrivals. The most enthusiastic reaction was Jon’s, the boy crying out happily and running to tacklehug the women. 

 

“The cousin and the wife?” Aloy whispered, leaning over to Diana and squeezing her hand back, which was possible the scariest thing she’d ever done. Diana smiled, though, so it was worth it.

 

“Yes,” she said. “The high priest’s sister, Lena. I am interested to hear her opinion on the matter, but to summarize our heated discussion before…” She winked at Aloy. “What do we have to lose by being outcast by this village?”

 

Aloy’s smile bloomed across her face. “Nothing whatsoever,” she said. “So, where do we get into these Secret Temples?”

 

From the determined smile that settled onto Lena’s face as Antiope presumably discussed strategy, they were not facing any conflicted familial loyalties.

 

Shortly after Lena and Kara joined the crowded table, Kon went and opened a hatch in the wall which, as it transpired, led to a ceramic oven. He had brought back quite the basket of fish, a haul that Aloy wasn’t certain she could have carried, even if she was confident that she could catch that much fish if she  _ wanted _ to. Kon had probably upgraded his intended haul after seeing their group, because there was enough well-cooked fish for everybody, which was delicious even though it came at the price of Diana letting go of Aloy’s hand to hold the skewer on hers. Kal also passed around a flask of some sort of heavy, syrupy beer that was so thick that Aloy kept trying to chew her mouthful. 

 

She sat back, watching faces as she listened to Diana’s translation. Lena seemed sincerely sad, matching her offer to describe the interior of the Secret Temples as best she could, in the hopes that whatever had corrupted her once-kindly brother could be found and destroyed. Kara, by contrast, seemed to be simmering with barely-contained rage, tempered only by her concern.

 

“Lena has a plan,” Diana said finally, turning to Aloy with a brilliant grin. Whatever this plan was, Diana  _ liked _ it.

 

“Sound good to me,” Aloy said. “What do we do?”

  
  


{}

  
  


Lena’s brother looked little like her. He was tall, though neither as tall nor as broad as Kal or Kon. He was bald, like J’onn or M’gann, though he had the sheen of being naturally bald rather than the light fuzz that now covered J’onn and M’gann’s heads. His robes were dark blue, not the light sky colour that everybody else seemed to feature in their outfits, and he wore them much heavier, bulking out his already strong build. He had unusually thin, sharp features and a stern expression that looked hewn in, but he smiled genuinely when his sister approached him, holding Kara’s hand, then gestured them into one of the huts built around the doorway, leaving only the six guards standing by the door. They were big, strong men and women, but definitely not Kal and Kon’s size.

 

“Move swiftly,” Antiope whispered, gesturing to the Amazons stationed at the far end of the valley. They ducked out of sight and a moment later there was a clash of metal on metal as they scraped their swords together, imitating the sound of a machine moving.

 

“What is that?” one of the guards called as they all turned, pointing their spears at the source of the sound.

 

“Gods-damned Snapmaw came out of the river again,” another one said. “Dax, Lon, Tor, with me. I will take no chances with these monsters. Ti, Vol, remain on guard. Inform the High Priest if we do not return.” Presumably the leader, she ran off towards the far end of the valley with three others, leaving only two guards on the doorway.

 

“Shield,” Antiope ordered quietly. Menalippe crouched with her back to the wall they were taking cover behind, her shield over her head, and Antiope charged, landing on Menalippe’s shield and flying into the air, over the heads of the two remaining guards. A shadow crossed over them, making them look up. As they were distracted, Hellene, one of the fastest, sped over, slamming one guard to her ground with her arms around his neck, choking him out as he flailed and gasped for air. Antiope landed on top of the other one, pulling him into a chokehold too. The Amazons did not engage in non-lethal combat often, but they were as expert at it as they were at all other forms, and the two were out in moments. They all waited for any sign that anybody in Lex’s hut had heard them, but there was nothing. 

 

“Let’s go,” Diana said, urging Aloy to take the lead as the rest of the Amazons ran softly up to the door, making a defensive circle around Aloy as she levelled her spear at the door, her eyes flickering rapidly as she read whatever her focus had to display. When Diana took a couple of steps further, her own display started up to show a series of circles turning from red to blue, centered on the contact point of the butt of Aloy’s spear. 

 

“This,” Aloy pointed out, “is an override device taken off a machine called a Corrupter and synced to my Focus, working for me. It gets me into doors like this, and I can turn machines against others if I’m overwhelmed.” She stepped back as the door dropped into the ground, revealing a large room, dimly lit with small veins of light woven into the walls. 

 

Beyond the table off to one side, covered in parts of machines and containers Aloy recognized as blaze and chillwater, the room made little outward sense. Pyramids of rock emerged from the ground in odd corners, possibly pathways emerged over their heads, accessible only by climbing, and large containers flew through the air in trains, guided by sparks of lightning. 

 

The large pyramid door closed behind them with a clang. “Move quickly,” Diana said. “That priest no doubt heard that door and will be bringing more soldiers once he has seen that we took his down.” 

 

“Aloy, can you prevent this door from opening?” Antiope asked.

 

“No… but that priest has gone to great lengths to keep people out, so he might not want to bring a lot of people in,” Aloy said, looking around. “Her name was Lois, right? LOIS!” she bellowed. “LOIS!”

 

They waited, but there was no response. “Let us search,” Diana said, looking around. “Which way, Aloy?”

 

“Let’s try… this way,” Aloy decided, gesturing them over to one of the pyramids. There was a triangular opening in the side, but on the other side was no floor, only a shaft downwards. “If he’s holding her hostage, he wouldn’t have put her somewhere easy to get into… or out of. Lena said this was the only part of this place she hadn’t already seen, too.” She pulled a hook off of her belt, flinging it up as she jumped down, giving Diana a minor heart attack before the hook caught and the rope went taught. 

 

“Aloy!” Antiope called, looking over the edge. “Can you see the bottom?”

 

“See it? I’m nearly there!” Aloy called back up with a laugh. “Come on down--only two at a time on the rope, though, okay? With all of our weapons and armour, any more will strain the rope. Don’t get on until you hear somebody call out that they’ve hit the bottom!”

 

Diana descended next, concerned about Aloy being alone in the unknown depths of this temple. Of course, she had travelled alone for a long time before meeting the Amazons and had done just fine, but Diana was concerned all the same.

 

At the bottom, the walls seemed to be made of great metal snakes, curling around them and hissing with steam and sparks. “GO!” Diana shouted up, before turning to Aloy. “Have you ever seen such a place, Aloy?” she asked.

 

“Oh, yeah, a few times,” Aloy said with a nod. “This is a cauldron, where machines are made. Different cauldrons make different machines. There are five of them in the lands where I grew up. I wonder if Lex put Lois in the heart of the Cauldron. Would make sense.”

 

“LOIS?” Diana called as they waited for the rest of the Amazons to make their way down, shouting out in Arabic. “Lois, are you here? We have come to find you on behalf of your husband and son!”

 

“Don’t let these little rooms and corridors fool you--these places are  _ huge,” _ Aloy cautioned, gesturing down the corridor. “We’ll probably come across a much more open area soon.”

 

She went to scout ahead, craning her head around a corner. “Yep. Giant open area. Oh, lovely, a shell-walker,” she sighed. “Lex  _ really _ doesn’t want anyone else here.”

 

“It is not wild?” Diana asked. “Are you so sure that the priest controls it?”

 

Aloy took another peek around the corner and cursed. Dark purple streamers of nano-tech streamed from its limbs and wrapped around its chassis. “...You remember I told you that an intelligence called Hephaestus created these machines?” 

 

“Is Hephaestus here?” Diana said, leaning closer to Aloy so she could also peer around. She knew better than to expect the true god, the gigantic, twisted blacksmith, but she felt compelled to see what this computer god  _ did _ look like.

 

“Probably not. But he’s connected--maybe he’s been talking to Lex, it would explain a sudden personality change. Hades did the same thing. See the purple streamers on that machine? Hephaestus has...touched it. Made it stronger, more aggressive, resistant to damage.”

 

“But not immune?” Diana said, smiling. 

 

“But not immune,” Aloy said, grinning back.

 

“What is the situation?” Antiope asked as the last of the Amazons hit the ground and they clustered around Aloy and Diana.

 

“Shell-walker. Likes to shoot lightning, uses a shield that  _ can _ be shot through, but the power of the shot is reduced, and has an area of effect ability that will shock everything around it. The hair on the back of your neck will stand up when that starts to happen,” Aloy quickly laid out. She  _ liked _ Antiope. The general had an analytical mind that ran along a similar track to hers. “Both claws can be shot off, and the tank on its back as well. It also moves fairly slowly.”

 

“Bows,” Antiope ordered. “Diana, Artemis, hang back with Menalippe and myself. We will take it down when it has been made vulnerable. Fan out around it in a circle--dizzy it, make it difficult for it to focus on any one target! Go!”

 

Aloy and the rest of the Amazons took off, the swiftest running to circle the machine while the others flanked it, taking up stances and firing their first volleys in the same breath. The beast chittered as the first round, from close to, took one of its claws off and dislodged the other. It lumbered towards Faruka, but before it could take more than a couple of steps, the ones who had circled it fired, knocking the tank off of its back. 

 

“GO!” Antiope ordered. Diana swung her sword back as she leaped, ready to bury it in the monster’s side. Antiope swung at the other side at the same time, the pair of them nearly bisecting the machine. Artemis came in last, smashing her giant battleaxe down from above and onto the machine’s head, destroying it.

 

“I have to admit, watching all of you work is extremely satisfying,” Aloy grinned, and popped open the undamaged tank the shell-walker had been carrying. “Oh,  _ jackpot. _ ” Blaze, metal containers, wire, echo chambers, spare metal shards, chillwater and sparklers came out of the tank in troves. 

 

“Are you going to take all of that?” Diana asked, amused by the way Aloy was grinning with delight at the horde.

 

“I wish I’d brought a cart. But now I can craft different types of ammo. Exploding grenades, freezing, lightning mines, tearblast arrows…” She blushed lightly. “Fighting machines alone means I have to get...inventive in how I take them down. So,” she motioned to the supplies at her feet.

 

“If these supplies are for weapons, of course we will aid you in carrying them,” Menalippe laughed. “Take what you need and get to searching, Aloy, and we shall take the rest.”

 

“And later, we shall require your lessons on weaponscraft,” Antiope added, looking around. “Where did you say that the prisoner might be?”

 

“Further in, at the heart of the Cauldron.”

  
  


{}

  
  


“Are you bipedal?” Lois asked.

 

“No,” Jason said. “Fourteen.”

 

“Are you… hmmm… let’s see… brown?” Lois asked, going with the first question that popped into her head. The goal was quantity, not strategy, keeping up a constant flow of speech to cover up the scraping sound of Jason digging. She sat by the bars, as she had since the boy had been thrown in with her, hiding him from the sight of the machine guarding them. She didn’t know what it thought of that, but hoped it thought she was exerting some protective instincts, some displaced motherly care, even though this kid was probably twice Jon’s age. Maybe it didn’t think anything at all.

 

Well, that was fine with her.

 

“Hmmm… a bit?” Jason grunted. He’d gotten quite far into the tunnel, and his voice was a bit muffled. “Thirteen.”

 

“Are you a carnivore?” Lois asked, raising her voice, hoping it would prompt Jason to raise his. 

 

“Yes,” he called back. “Twelve!”

 

“Damn… are you… uh… do you have wings?” Lois asked, eyeing the Fireclaw as it stalked around the makeshift cage they were in. The Temple hadn’t been built with prisons; a pile of metal rods had been piled and twisted to make a circular cage, the bottoms sunk deep into the dirt so that human hands couldn’t shift them. It was dark, moist dirt, that was how deep below the golden sands they were.

 

Human hands could shift dirt, though. That was what they did. The circle wasn’t perfect or clear to see, and there was a dark corner that was difficult to see from the outside when Lois sat in the right place. 

 

“Yes!” Jason shouted. “Eleven!”

 

“Okay, hang on,” Lois argued. “If you’re a bird, you’re bipedal! You have two legs!”

 

“Things have wings that aren’t birds, and I’m gonna count that as two questions!” Jason called. “Nine!”

 

Lois warily watched the Fireclaw stalking around the cage. It hadn’t noticed anything amiss yet… “There wasn’t a question in there!” she insisted.

 

“Yeah, but you made me give up a hint!”

 

“I didn’t  _ make _ you, you could’ve just let me be wrong!”

 

“You have no idea how much I could not have done that…”

 

All of a sudden, the Fireclaw lunged, smashing a huge claw into the floor and yanking Jason out of the tunnel. The kid yelled frantically as he was hauled into the air, grabbing the claw that held him and attempting to tear at the wires barehanded.

 

“Let him GO!” Lois yelled, scrambling for the tunnel. It had collapsed when the Fireclaw had smashed it, but if a kid could scrape through it with his bare hands, she could too, even knowing that there was no way she was fast enough, no way she was strong enough to do anything, she was just going to get killed alongside Jason--

 

She could hear the Fireclaw screeching, Jason shouting, flares of flame, the clash of metal on metal--

 

Wait, what?

 

The sounds kept going as she dug out the fallen earth. It shouldn’t take this long for the Fireclaw to kill Jason, should it? And while Jason was still cursing like a demon, she hadn’t heard any screams of pain…

 

She surfaced in time to see the Fireclaw hit the ground, a long spear buried through its chest, its whole body on fire. She couldn’t see Jason anywhere, but she could see a dozen women, all tall and strong and dressed like no clan she’d ever seen but festooned with enough weapons to clearly be warriors. Several of them fired a last volley of flaming arrows at the Fireclaw.

 

“What…?” Lois stared, jaw on the ground, eyes bouncing between the downed machine and warrior women. 

 

A brief murmur in another language she didn’t recognize caught her attention, and between the battalion she caught sight of Jason kneeling on the ground with another woman, flaming red hair cascading down her shoulders, as the woman examined his arms and put what looked to be healing salve on them. 

 

“Lois?” the leader of the warrior women asked, visibly in command of the rest of them simply from her posture. 

 

“Yes?” Lois said in surprise. “Who are you?”

 

“I am General Antiope, and we have come to rescue you and return you to your family,” the woman said. “We were passing through when we head that you had disappeared after attempting to investigate why the high priest was acting so strangely.”

 

“It’s the voice in here,” Lois said immediately. “Machines don’t speak, but these ones do. They spoke to him, got into his mind somehow.”

 

One of the woman, olive-skinned with smooth black hair, began speaking to the red-haired woman in a strange language, but Jason interrupted, speaking the same language. Both women appeared startled, then the red-haired woman got into an animated conversation with Jason.

 

“He speaks Aloy’s language,” Antiope said in surprise. “Is he of your tribe?”

 

“No… the machines brought him from some encounter they had far away,” Lois explained. “He was exploring one of these temples--he said he should not have gone alone, but he did, and when they found him, they brought him back here instead of killing him. We don’t know why. He’s an…” She hesitated to say it, but she liked Jason. He could be a bit mouthy, but he wasn’t a bad kid. He didn’t deserve to be cast out. “He’s an outcast,” she said, folding her arms and squaring her shoulders, daring the woman to scorn him.

 

Instead, they smiled. Jason turned to Lois with a big grin. “She says,” he said, pointing at the red-haired woman, Aloy, “that so is she. And she wants to hear the voice that’s been talking to your priest.”

  
  


{}

  
  


“The centre’s down here, they think that you pray at it and talk to a god, but ACTUALLY it’s a super-advanced computer,” Jason said excitedly. Aloy was enjoying listening to the kid talk. Hearing a new voice was novel, and after a while of needing constant translation aid from Diana, it was enjoyable to just have a  _ conversation _ again.

 

Besides, the kid was  _ ferociously _ smart. It wasn’t often she got to talk to somebody who knew what the Temples really were already, and Jason seemed to relish the prospect of taking them apart to find out what they really were. He spoke four languages, though cut himself off before mentioning who he learned them from. She got the sense that he knew many other outcasts, but was wary of letting anything slip about them. After seeing Aloy and Diana’s Focuses, he reached into his mouth and revealed that he had one of his own and had been hiding it in a cavity at the back of his mouth where he’d lost a couple of teeth.

 

“Have you modded yours much?” Jason asked as he wiped his off on his clothes. They were dark brown and black, unlike the bright colours of Krypton, and better armoured, though he looked to be still a few years too young to take a Proving.

 

“...You can  _ modify _ them?” Aloy asked in awe. “That’s an  _ option? _ ”

 

“Hell yeah!” Jason said excitedly. “Shit, I’ve  _ gotta _ introduce you to--” He cut himself off again, focusing on drying off his Focus and lodging it back in his ear. He clicked his tongue a few times, frowned, then repeated the click sequence again.

 

“Is that a signal?” Diana asked.

 

“I haven’t got any down here,” Jason said absentmindedly. “Something’s blocking it…”

 

“The modifications to your Focus?” Aloy asked.

 

“Yeah… huh?” Jason trailed off into an involved conversation with Lois as she pointed insistently at a large centre console. “Okay, she saw the high priest talking to this computer, and it talked back in a strange language. Huh…”

 

“Let me see,” Aloy said, stepping up to the computer terminal. A blink and a quick hand motion had her Focus connecting to the terminal, the screen popping up in front of her eyes. Grainy, green text started scrolling across the screen, going from top to bottom too fast for Aloy to read. “I haven’t seen this before...Computer, display main protocol.”

 

“ _ Denied. _ ”

 

Aloy’s eyes narrowed and she growled. “Cute,” she muttered, and brought the butt of her spear up. “Deny  _ this, _ ” she growled as she connected the Corruptor override directly to the terminal. The coded circle popped up and she began to spin it, before sparks shot out of the  _ physical _ terminal and into Aloy’s hands, shocking her.

 

“Fire and  _ spit, _ ” she cursed, shaking her hands. 

 

“Do you not know the meaning of  _ denied, _ savage?”

 

Aloy and the Amazons whirled around at the sound of the High Priest’s voice. The shock of seeing him standing in the chamber behind him delayed the realization that he was speaking  _ English _ . 

 

“Lex!” Lois yelled, spitting off a few bitter sentences in Arabic. Aloy didn’t need a translation to know that Lois was taking the High Priest to task. 

 

“Enough,” Lex said dismissively. “You, female of the Nora… you are very far from home. How did you come to be here? And the rest of you…” His eyes slid coldly across the startled Amazons. “Unrecognized. No known markings. Armour and weapon designs unknown. I will know what you are.”

 

“We will answer no questions of yours, priest,” Antiope snapped as the Amazons levelled their weapons at the high priest.

 

“I did not intend to ask any,” he said, holding out a hand. Something like a shimmering purple cloud began to flow from his eyes, ears, mouth, nose and under his fingernails.

 

Lois screamed. Jason began swearing in multiple languages. “Ye gods,” Diana breathed. “He  _ is _ possessed!”

 

“Don’t let it touch you!” Aloy yelled as the blue cloud flew at them. The Amazons rolled and dodged the shining wave. Aloy dodged close enough to see that the cloud was made up of millions of tiny metal slivers, no bigger than the nail on her pinky.

 

Nanites.

 

“It’s an AI! That’s what’s infested him!” Aloy yelled, throwing a Shock Grenade at the blue wave. There was an horrifying  _ screech _ as the electricity shorted out the nanites, causing them to clatter uselessly to the ground in a sound similar to falling rain against tree leaves. Lex lurched backwards with an inhuman hiss. Aloy threw a second Shock Grenade, slamming into his chest. Lex  _ screeched _ again, that horrible, machine sound, as he fell to the ground, convulsing and spewing nanites.

 

Lois grabbed Aloy’s arm, yelling. “Did you kill him?” Diana translated guardedly.

 

“Nah, but he’s gonna feel that when he wakes up in the morning,” Aloy said, kicking aside inert nanites as she walked over to the limp, twitching priest. “And… probably a lot more mornings after that. But he’s alive, and the AI infesting him isn’t anymore.” She knocked aside the Spark Grenade, checking Lex’s pulse and breathing--erratic, but there. “Er… Artemis, think you could pick him and and shake him down for nanites? They really get into the body, he’ll probably be crapping them for a while, I just wanna make sure to get as many out of him as possible.”

 

“Gladly,” Artemis said, picking up the priest. He was tall, but when the mighty Amazon held him up, his toes barely brushed the ground. Artemis held him up with one hand, patting down his robes to brush out nanites with the other. 

 

Aloy went back to the computer. “You have seen this sort of possession before?” Diana asked, following her. 

 

“Only in machines. Hades used nanites. The tribes around my home called it metalburn, because it literally corroded the metal shells of the machines it was in,” she sighed. “I didn’t think they could be used on humans.”

 

“There is a not inconsiderable amount of blood coming out of this man, along with the nanites, so I would venture that they ought not to be used on humans, either,” Menalippe commented. She said something reassuring-sounding to Lois, then added in English, “I think he’ll live. Probably. We ought to get him to a healer.”

 

“So which AI is it?” Diana asked. “Do you know?”

 

“No...If it had been part of the Zero Dawn program, it would’ve let me in. It might be another AI, unconnected to that system.” She shrugged. “Can’t say more until I’ve got more clues.”

 

“We will take Lex, Lois and Jason back to the surface,” Antiope said. “Aloy, do you wish to remain here to investigate?”

 

“Definitely. I want to find the computer core of this cauldron, see what it’s been made to do. It shouldn’t take me long,” she added with a nod.

 

“I will remain with you,” Diana said, putting a hand on Aloy’s shoulder, which just about killed her on the spot. It didn’t help that the princess added, “if there are any further dangers here, you will not face them alone.”

 

“Actually, I wanna stay here too,” Jason said, looking thoughtfully at the drifts of nanites at his feet. “I think this might’ve been the weird signal I ran off to check out. I wanna know more.”

 

“We will await you above,” Antiope said, speaking to Lois and leading her and the Amazons back towards the shaft upwards.

 

“So, the computer core--hey, those are dead now,” Aloy said when she spotted Jason quickly scooping a handful into his pocket.

 

“Doesn’t mean we can’t learn anything from them,” Jason said casually. “Well, I mean,  _ I _ can’t, but I know people who can.”

 

“Other outcasts?” Aloy said. There’d been a community of outcasts on Nora land. It didn’t surprise Aloy that there might be another somewhere else. Surviving alone was...hard. But the way Jason was shifty about things piqued her curiosity. His immediate hunted look told her she was bang on the mark. “Hey, kid, remember, I’m one too. You’ve got nothing to fear.”

 

“Just because you’re an outcast too doesn’t mean you’re alright,” Jason said stubbornly. 

 

Her head nod and eyebrow quirk surrendered the point. True. “C’mon then. Probably got more climbing ahead.”

 

He seemed surprised by the lack of prodding. “It’s just… my family, we’d be long dead if we trusted everybody just because they’re an  _ outcast _ ,” he explained, following her. “I mean, you  _ seem _ alright, but I’m not leading a bunch of women who can  _ all _ tear apart machines with ease home, y’know?”

 

Despite herself, Aloy snorted. “Yeah. I know,” she said with a shrug. “Can you tell me how you modded your Focus, instead?”

 

“Well, no, because  _ I _ didn’t do it, I… ugh,” he groaned, rubbing his head. “But you  _ know _ about those nanites, and the AIs… he’d  _ really  _ like to talk to you, but…”

 

“Would it be more acceptable to only bring myself and Aloy?” Diana suggested. “Only two women is surely less threatening than a dozen, and we could rejoin the other Amazons later.”

 

“That… could work…” Jason said thoughtfully. “...I’ll think about it.”

 

“Good enough,” Aloy said, hefting her spear. “Right. The core should be through here…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Could that be plot, twinkling in the distance there? Hey, guess what, we have a plot for this now! In the meantime, Aloy gets gayer for Diana, hangs out with some friendly and absurdly strong farmers, and meets a sass child who she’d probably like to adopt if he wasn’t very adopted already. ~Mangaluva
> 
> Aloy hasn’t really noticed that Antiope has already adopted her. She’ll notice when we get to where we’re going next chapter, and someone else tries to. A bit more bluntly. ~Isis_The_Sphinx
> 
> Next time: The Outcasts.

**Author's Note:**

> M: I could blame Isis_The_Sphinx but this is my fault, I asked for some details about Horizon: Zero Dawn because I’ve never played it or watched a complete LP of it and don’t really have time to, all she did was tell me plot and a bit of worldbuilding and I did this to myself.
> 
> ItS: No, no, it’s really my fault. I egged you on.
> 
> M: I blame you wholly and completely then, for everything, ever.
> 
> Anyway, this’ll probably just be a series of loosely connected oneshots about Aloy and Diana travelling, discovering different civilizations and meeting various people who might be familiar to DC fans… do you have a favourite you wanna see remade in the HZD world? If you live outside the US, do you have any thoughts on how your culture would be reborn--what, if any of it, would return if everybody was wiped out? This is a hella fun setting to play in and we FULLY intend to.


End file.
